


Down By The River

by tielan



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Recovery, Wakanda forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-01 20:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15150929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: One day at a time, coming to understand.





	Down By The River

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyjax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyjax/gifts).



He dreams of falling.

Sometimes he’s falling backwards, his cries blown away by sharp winds as icy as the drifts in which he lands. Sometimes he’s falling forwards, surrounded by burning metal and oilsmoke.

He always wakes up before he lands.

 

The first time he wakes to the scent of food cooking over a woodfire, covered with a goat’s wool blanket in a mud hut with a woven leaf roof, he thinks he must be dreaming.

It’s homely, comforting, simple.

There’s nothing simple about the young woman who steps into the hut and surveys him with bright and intelligent eyes. “How is your head? It’s going to ache a lot because we had to adjust your biochemistry to remove the HYDRA programming. I can’t even imagine how bad it must have been when they programmed you – the _Hatut Zeraze_ say the Russian branch of HYDRA didn’t bother with subtlety, let alone any kind of consideration for what they were doing to people!”

She pauses in her outrage, her head tilted like a bird awaiting a tidbit of a response from him.

He drags a, “My head is fine, thank you,” out of his chest. It feels like a growl, but she doesn’t seem bothered by his surliness.

 

He learns that he’s in Wakanda – an African nation that everyone always thought was dirt-poor, and turned out to be richer than America.

He learns that the mud hut is fitted out with medical sensors, the leaf roof contains enough communications hardware for a HYDRA base, and the blanket he sleeps under is impregnated with nanotech that does everything from keep his temperature regulated, to monitor his sleep patterns.

He learns the names of the people around him – the men whose strength helped him to the bathroom facilities when he was too weak to move, the women who cared for him when he was out, the children who poke their heads into his hut and giggle when he says ‘hello’.

 

Her name is Shuri, and she’s a princess of Wakanda.

This is told to him by one of the men who sweeps out the hut – the middle-aged man with a wife and two sons, nothing more than a humble goatherder whose hut he is staying in.

Bucky distrusts this declaration. The man’s English is excellent, if accented, and this ‘humble goatherder’ lives in a valley with not only a guest hut that’s set up for the medical care of the Winter Soldier, but also a lab suitable for the Princess of Wakanda to work in, even if Bucky mostly seems to find her sitting down by the river.

“Sometimes it’s pleasant just to just feed the fishes,” she says the first time he finds her with her bare feet trailing in the water. “My father used to say that if we don’t appreciate the world while we’re living in it, then when else is there?”

 

Wakanda is full of contradictions, none of which the Wakandans themselves consider contradictions, merely aspects of life and living.

Muthir the goatherder lives in a house with temperature control, cooled in the heat of the day, warmed in the chill of the night, but herds his goats with nothing more to help him than a staff and his dogs and prepares meals by hand, cooking them in a claypot over raked coals. His wife, Amni, works in technology with Princess Shuri but weaves her own fabric and makes clothing out of goat’s wool, and their children milk the goats by hand, calling each by name.

“Technology is not our god,” Muthir explains to Bucky as he slices and dices the root vegetables for the pot. “There are few who do things simply to see if they can be done. That is not our way.”

 

One of the few who does things just to try out new things is the Princess Shuri, whose methods and methodologies are considered unusual, even among the technologically advanced Wakandans.

“There are plenty of others who keep track of the past,” Shuri says when Bucky comments on this. “And I would not throw all our methods away. Our people have lasted a thousand years because we did things that way – and we have seen in the west of what comes of advancement for advancement’s sake. Now, clench your fist – no, not that one, silly! The fist that you don’t have!”

She has him hooked up to a machine that’s monitoring his neural patterns as she tries to ascertain the damage HYDRA did to his motor and sensory neurones.

Bucky clenches the fist he doesn’t have and feels stupid for doing so, because he feels...nothing. A dull ache maybe? Or perhaps that’s normal? He doesn’t know. He’s not really sure about anything anymore.

 

It turns out Muthir is the chief Wakandan expert in the treatment and management of mental and psychological rehabilitation from trauma, torture, and autonomy violation. So Bucky has a princess designing neurotechnology for him and an experienced medical psychologist on hand if he should need any counselling or assistance...

What he doesn’t understand is _why_.

Muthir’s family seems perfectly happy to be hosting him. The Princess Shuri certainly isn’t casting judgement. And the villagers stare at him, but it’s more in the manner of people seeing something unusual and being fascinated by it rather than being judgemental about him and what he’s done.

And maybe he’s been in a state of war for so long, but Bucky can’t wrap his brain around it.

 

He sits down in the laboratory chair. It’s a lot more comfortable than any lab chair the Winter Soldier ever sat in – upholstered with good padding and a beautifully tactile fabric covering.

“Why isn’t anyone here afraid of me?”

Shuri looks up from her tablet, blinking, and Bucky realises that maybe he shouldn’t have come out with the non-sequitur. Still, her reply is more curious than amused.

“Did you want them to be?”

“No.” He’s just not used to such an easy welcome. Even the Avengers who came at Steve’s call were cautious; only Wilson joked and argued and stood his ground without any wariness. “I’m just trying to understand.”

 

He goes fishing with Muthir’s eldest, walking down the river to a pool where the trout gather and spending the chilly hours of the early morning baiting hooks, thigh-deep in the water. In spite of the difference between the ripple of the river among the reeds and the crash of the Atlantic against the rocks, Bucky is reminded of fishing trips with his dad and his sister and sometimes Steve, so long ago.

He learns how to herd goats, feeling a little foolish when they ignore him, but persisting, because Amni tells him that the goats must learn his voice, his movements, and his habits before they will trust him. And as their warm bodies press around him – and their hooves clatter over his feet – he thinks of the war, and learning how to trust first his fellow soldiers in the army, and then the Howling Commandos.

He sits outside the hut with Muthir and watches the older man conduct his business with good humour and sharp cunning, feels the sunlight on his face and his limbs, and discovers what it is to be human again – a nobody, one more person in a community of friendly souls, instead of a tool to be wielded, or a monster to be watched.

 

“I can fit you with a new arm if you like,” Shuri tells him one day. “With the nanotech that I’ve developed it would be so easy – and far more comfortable than that ugly thing they had on you! Besides, you’re unbalanced without it, and I have just the design in mind—”

“No.” He doesn’t quite shout it, but it comes out louder than he likes.

“No?”

He doesn’t know how to explain it to her. “I don’t want... I can’t...”

He likes who he is without the arm – not the Winter Soldier, just Bucky who lives as a goatherder in Wakanda.

 

 

He strips off and slips into the river at sunset, swimming out into the centre of the river, letting the water slough away his fears and his questions, drowning his uncertainties as he floats among the reeds and watches the stars come out one by one.

When he finally swims back to the shore, Shuri is sitting on the riverbank, her hands wrapped around her legs, her cheek resting on her knees as she contemplates the night sky above them.

“If you don’t want company, I can go,” she says. “But I should much rather stay here.”

Bucky doesn’t quite smile. “I could do with company.”

 


End file.
